WASHINGTON – Former Bard College president Leon Botstein and most recently a music educator at the Annandale-on-Hudson College, had abruptly severed all relations with the school after an email surfaced where he asked the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein whether a young woman Epstein was grooming was “for me, or are you keeping her for yourself.”
In documents obtained by Mid-Hudson News, Ranking House Judiciary Committee Member Jamie Raskin and Rep. Dean have called for a Justice Department Investigation into the situation.
“DOJ and FBI’s refusal to investigate is part of a broader effort to protect President Donald Trump,” Raskin and Dean wrote.
“This evidence, and the facts laid out in the Epstein files, surely meet and exceed the federal law enforcement standard for initiating a criminal investigation: the existence of evidence that a crime ‘may have occurred.’ These facts strongly indicate that a crime may have occurred. Yet, you have done nothing, and launched no investigation about this incident which you and your staff must have known of for at least 18 months. In so doing, you have effectively permitted a potential co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein to stay in a position of power over young students, faculty and staff for an additional year at least,” Raskin and Dean wrote to Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Cash Patel.
Emails and messages reviewed by the Judiciary Committee show that Epstein groomed the young woman throughout 2014, offering advice and assistance with her education and career in the United States.
That May, Epstein sent Jane Doe to meet Botstein, the House Committee Democrats say, ostensibly to assess her musical abilities and provide education guidance. In an email from his Bard account, Botstein asked whether Jane Doe was “for me.”
The lawmakers said the evidence uncovered by the committee contradicts a July 2025 DOJ-FBI memorandum and several follow-up claims by Patel and Blanche asserting that investigators found no evidence warranting an investigation of Epstein’s uncharged associates.
Raskin is demanding answers about why DOJ exposed the young woman’s identity while redacting Botstein’s email address, who directed that “disparate treatment, and whom they were seeking to protect.”
Meanwhile, the ranking member said more than a dozen whistleblowers have provided committee staff information about a culture of sexual misconduct at Bard spanning decades. They pointed to several reports accusing Botstein of groping women and asking sexualized questions during tenure interviews.
Raskin wrote, “I write to share damning evidence that Botstein likely enabled and possibly even participated in Epstein’s abuse while serving as Bard’s president, as well as deeply troubling whistleblower reports that Botstein used his influence on Bard’s campus to influence Title IX proceedings and protect sexual predators on the Bard faculty.”
The Ranking Member said that “your outrageous abandonment of your responsibilities is not about Leon Botstein. It is about protecting another individual who appears frequently in the Epstein files while also may have been a co-conspirator in Jeffrey Epstein’s brutal and sickening sex trafficking operation.”
And Raskin said, “yet you continue to show the world that you would rather let a dozen, even 100, or 1,000 human sex traffickers go free than allow the possibility of an honest investigation of the conduct of one man.”
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